President Obama introduces his My Brother's Keeper initiative with students from the Hyde Park Academy.

President Obama introduces his My Brother's Keeper initiative with students from the Hyde Park Academy.

Photo: Chip Somodevilla, Getty Images

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President Obama introduces his My Brother's Keeper initiative

President Obama introduces his My Brother's Keeper initiative

Photo: Jewel Samad, AFP/Getty Images

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Obama Brother's Keeper program inspired by Oakland project

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President Obama, backed by $200 million in philanthropic pledges, launched a new program Wednesday aimed at helping young men of color succeed in school and the job market - and some of its inspiration came from a program already in place in Oakland.

The new My Brother's Keeper program is designed to reverse a national trend in which young men of color are six times as likely to be murdered as whites. The disparities are just as stark in the classroom, where 86 percent of African American fourth-grade boys and 82 percent of their Latino classmates are reading below proficiency levels, compared with white boys at 54 percent, according to the White House.

On Thursday, Obama announced the formation of a panel of foundations, business leaders and government officials that will review the impact of federal programs and policies on young men of color. It would also review what programs are working and which could be expanded.

More than a dozen leading foundations - including Oakland's Kapor Center for Social Impact - announced that they would collectively pledge $200 million over the next five years toward the program.

Oakland initiative

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Some of that money eventually could roll back to Oakland, where a program called Elev8 is being cited as an example of the type of strategy the federal initiative could replicate. The program, which is in three other U.S. cities, provides mentoring and other forms of assistance to 3,000 Oakland middle-school students in low-income neighborhoods.

The results at Roosevelt Middle School, one of the participating schools, have opened some eyes. The Academic Performance Index score for Roosevelt has grown from 627 - well below the state's target of 800 - to 679 last year, according to program administrators. Scores for African American students jumped almost 100 points, among the best in the district.

"The president's initiative is about identifying the programs that are already working, and bringing them to more places. Oakland has been a laboratory for a lot of the most promising approaches, policies and solutions, and Elev8 is a great example of that," said Katie Butterfield, a spokeswoman for Atlantic Philanthropies, which is a key player in the new federal program and gave $15 million to seed Oakland's Elev8 in 2009.

Mayor on hand

Another sign that Oakland may be in line to benefit from My Brother's Keeper was that Mayor Jean Quan was invited to Thursday's unveiling and was in the front row at the White House press conference. Quan also met with potential funders about possible future partnerships, spokesman Sean Maher said.

"We're expecting some of that money to come home," he said.

The need is certainly there in Oakland. The Elev8 program could expand to 10,000 students if it had the funding, said Josefina Alvarez Mena, CEO of Safe Passages, which oversees the Elev8 program in Oakland.

If the federal program "is looking for places where these types of programs are working and could expand, Oakland is certainly a place where that is happening," she said.

Politically, the initiative could help Obama in two ways. First, since the program is funded through philanthropic and business sources, he wouldn't have to go through the Republican-led Congress, which has rebuffed much of his agenda.

Blunts criticism

Plus, it buffers Obama against criticism that as the first African American president he has not done enough to help communities of color - a message that became national news in October after talk show host Tavis Smiley called him out.

"The data is going to indicate, sadly, that when the Obama administration is over, black people will have lost ground in every single leading economic indicator category," Smiley said in an appearance on Fox News. "On that regard, the president ought to be held responsible."